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The Social Context of Copper in Ancient Egypt down to the end of Middle Kingdom
Odler, Martin ; Bárta, Miroslav (advisor) ; Altenmüller, Hartwig (referee) ; Lehner, Mark Edward (referee)
1 Odler, Martin 2020: The social context of copper in Ancient Egypt down to the end of Middle Kingdom. PhD thesis. Prague: Charles University, Faculty of Arts. Supervisor: Prof. Mgr. Miroslav Bárta, Dr. Abstract The subject of the doctoral thesis is a reconstruction of the chaîne opératoire of copper in ancient Egypt from its earliest occurrence in the fourth millennium BC until the end of the Middle Kingdom. As copper was the metal most widely used in ancient Egyptian society, its study can offer statistical "big data" otherwise rarely available for ancient cultures. Three large groups of sources are discussed successively: written and iconographic sources, archaeological sources (material culture, i.e. artefacts), and archaeometallurgical sources, divided into several consecutive stages of the chaîne opératoire. Copper was named bjA and read [byr] in the periods under study, while an interpretation as arsenical copper with a low and high content of arsenic, respectively, is proposed for so- called Asian copper and Hsmn. In the Middle Kingdom, the term Hsmn begun to be used also for tin bronze. The word for crucible was bD(.t) and the word for metalworker (incorporating both metallurgists and smiths) was bD.ty. There is no substantial Egyptian evidence from the periods under study for the current...
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